Dimensionality Reduction

Data reduction by decreasing the dimensionality (exploratory multivariate statistics). This interpretation of the term data reduction pertains to analytic methods (typically multivariate exploratory techniques such as Factor Analysis, Multidimensional Scaling, Cluster Analysis, Canonical Correlation, or Neural Networks that involve reducing the dimensionality of a data set by extracting a number of underlying factors, dimensions, clusters, etc., that can account for the variability in the (multidimensional) data set.